Bad Endings Made Right
by aspecialkindofhuman
Summary: After playing dmmd several times (and crying the whole time) I decided to write about what happened beyond the bad endings, and how all the precious dmmd babes could get the happy endings they deserve. First one up: Koujaku


So here's EVEN MORE dmmd fanfic because well its taken over my life. As the name suggests this is how I imagined things would go after the heart-wrenching ends in dmmd because I really really really just want my babies to live long happy lives together IS THAT SO WRONG. okay whatever. this is koujaku's bad ending warped to become good because I am weak and can't stomach unhappy endings. Okay, cool. Have fun (also, there might be a possible bluejaku au fanfic extra tidbit within the next couple chapters or so because DAMN i love that au) anyway, hope you like it and as always tell me what you think.

* * *

**Koujaku**

"Koujaku…"

His voice was a low whisper, less than nothing. Clenching his fists, he tried again.

"Koujaku."

Stronger that time, still a little hoarse.

"Koujaku. Koujaku. Koujaku. Koujaku." The words came slowly, tumbling awkwardly out of his mouth and around his fumbling tongue. His nails made little half-moons in the paleness of his palm that grew deeper and darker as the minutes passed.

"Koujaku. Koujaku. Koujaku."

_Stop it would you?_

And there he was. Right on time.

_Why won't you just give up? Call it quits._

He ignored _his _creeping, insidious tone and focused on the real one, the true voice that was being held deep inside him. "Koujaku, Koujaku, Koujaku, Koujaku."

A little breath of blue began to slip into his long white hair.

_Ugh. _

The little half moons in his palms began to bleed. The red dripped down his white skin and across the pale sheets he lay in. Gritting his teeth, he watched it bleed into the sheets and across the pale limbs tangled beneath them.

_We've been through this, Aoba. _

Closing his eyes, Aoba kept his head down, balling his bleeding fist and pressing it deep into the sheets.

_You're not getting out of here._

"Kou - jak - u." The words struggled through his mouth, through sharp gritted teeth, through a small unwilling mouth. "Kou - jak - u."

_You can't leave. You can't rescue your precious Koujaku._ Shiroba laughed from a deep, dark place within Aoba. _You can barely stand up without me. _

"Leave me alone!" Aoba cried through his teeth, struggling up off the now crimson sheets. He managed to force himself up onto his knees before he collapsed again, falling onto his heels. The blue color slowly filling his hair spiked once and then stopped, like a faucet cut off and left to drip.

_You . . . need . . . me_. Shiroba's voice was tauntingly light. _You barely survived that first night in Oval Tower._ _If I hadn't of taken over, if you hadn't _let _me take over they would've crushed you, those cruel cruel scientists. _

Aoba's teeth ground together. He could hear them creaking, so intense was his hatred for the dark being that lived within him.

_After we took them down, well. _Shiroba's voice was painted red with a smile. _Toue was a piece of cake. _

"He had it coming." Aoba's voice crackled out of his throat like a growl.

"_Finally_." Shiroba was gaining strength. He threaded his invisible fingers around Aoba's throat, dragging him down, down into the softness of the white sheets. "Something we agree on."

Like poison, Shiroba's words spread numbly out of his throat and between his teeth. They landed softly in the dark air of Shiroba's room, sitting on top of the air like some noxious gas. Wherever they touched, Aoba's skin was left numb and clammy. He could feel Shiroba beginning to take hold again.

"Look, I destroyed Toue," Shiroba's voice was soft, too soft, in Aoba's ears. "I helped you get out of that rat trap they had you in. All I asked for in return was a little bit of comfort and some quality time with our beastial friend."

"You killed Sei." Aoba bit his tongue so hard blood began to flow. It combated the numbness, running down his throat in waves of crimson color.

"He wanted to be killed." Shiroba rolled Aoba's eyes, pushing him out of the bed and onto his feet. They wore nothing but a pair of red tights, short little white shorts and a skintight white top. Without the coat they usually wore, Aoba and Shiroba's pale arms were bare and exposed, tinged with the crimson of the blood still spilling from his palm. "He just didn't expect that _I'd _be the one to do it."

"You're a monster." Tears began to form at the corner of Aoba's eyes.

Shiroba shrugged. "Maybe. But I'm _your _monster."

"I hate you!" The tears poured down Aoba's cheeks, spilling freely out of his eyes even as Shiroba lifted his arms to grab the tight red sleeves from an open drawer beside his bed. "I hate you so much!"

"_I hate you_," Shiroba mocked Aoba's high, whiny voice, giggling softly. He pulled the sleeves on and slid the giant red cufflinks into place. "You're pathetic."

"Why? Why won't you let me go?" Aoba could feel himself sinking back into the dark place in his mind. The little corner Shiroba had forced him in everyday since he'd taken over.

"Why won't you just die in peace!" Shiroba hissed. "I've given you EVERYTHING you've asked for! Toue is dead, the Old Residential District is safe, and we STILL have Koujaku! What more do you want, huh? What more? WHAT MORE!?"

Aoba stopped crying. There was something rumbling inside him, inside Shiroba, bouncing out to slash through Aoba like an aftershock. It felt like an earthquake; an earthquake from within.

"'STOP IT!' he says! 'LET ME GO!' he says. Well, where would you be without me, huh? You little piece of shit? WHERE WOULD YOU BE WITHOUT ME!" Shiroba's screams were getting stronger and louder even as he was being shook out of Aoba's body from within.

Aoba, Shiroba, Aoba, Shiroba - they stumbled over to the mirror as one being. Aoba saw nothing but white skin and red sleeves, striped down the front with jagged black lines. Shiroba saw nothing but blue hair and pink skin and a smile almost too big for his face.

"UGH, STOP IT!" They cried as one. "WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!"

They stumbled backwards. Aoba, or maybe it was Shiroba, tripped over a low-red coffee table and fell. Their head landed hard on the floor, hard enough to send stars dizzying through both their eyes. Then.

Nothing.

For a moment, the two of them sat together in unconsciousness.

"Wow," Aoba said, looking around the darkness of their shared mind. "That was some fall."

The two of them were the only thing lit in the darkness. There was no light around them, yet, the two of them could be seen, clear as day, floating placidly in the empty space of unconsciousness. Turning his head, Aoba strained to look behind him, but saw nothing. The movement caused Aoba to spin out a little to the side and he gasped, paddling his arms out to try and stay upright. It was like they were swimming in a pool of ink.

"You big oaf."

Aoba looked across the darkness to where Shiroba sat with his knees curled up to his chest.

"You're such a klutz," he sniffed, glaring at Aoba meanly.

"You're just like me," Aoba said, very quietly, almost mouthing the words.

"Huh?" Shiroba narrowed his eyes in Aoba's directions.

Aoba gestured to the consciousness they shared. "You and me . . ." he shook his head and looked around. "We really are the same person, aren't we?"

Shiroba's mouth fell open. "Are you . . . accepting me?"

Aoba opened his mouth to say something but couldn't get more than a gasp to leave his throat.

"What?" Shiroba blinked, sitting up straighter and looking around at the darkness that enveloped him. "What is it? It's - AH!" He looked down at his hands and gasped, spinning out into the darkness.

"There's color," Aoba gasped, paddling closer, swimming through the darkness with his hands cupped near his chest. "In your hands!"

"No!" Shiroba held his hands to his chest. "No, wait!"

But it was too late. The paleness of Shiroba's skin was receding, leaving nothing but pink pigment in its place. Shiroba looked up and Aoba saw light flooding into his eyes, all greys and yellows and blacks.

"What's - ?" Aoba tried to ask, but Shiroba was paddling away from him.

"Stay back!" he called, like Aoba was the source of his sudden influx of pigmentation. "Stay back!"

"Wait!" Aoba reached out for him, straining through the darkness.

In his haste, Shiroba made a movement too fast for his weight and he was sent careening down into the darkness.

"NO!" Aoba called, reaching for him with a hand. "STOP! I NEED YOU!"

And suddenly their hands were interlaced. Aoba blinked and looked down at the palm that grasped his, sucking in a breath when he saw that it was the same pink as his own.

"What?" Aoba tried to speak, but stopped when the arm attached to the palm straightened.

The shoulder came up after that, followed by a collarbone, the long column of a neck, and then a face. Somewhere, far away in the vast planes of Aoba's consciousness, he could see Shiroba's clothes descending. Just his clothes. The heavy white cloak and the stupid red earrings; all of it was falling down down down into darkness until Aoba could no longer see it.

But Shiroba, or rather, the part of Aoba that had become Shiroba, was attatched to the hand he held.

"What did you say?" he asked, blue hair flying in all directions.

His eyes, part grey, part yellow, part pale white, were shining brightly. So brightly Aoba almost couldn't look at him. Every part of him was radiant, in fact. Like he'd swallowed a candle, the light lit him up from the inside all along his skin. Aoba looked down at the palm he held. His fingers were burning pleasantly, like he was holding them over a low flame. The heat touched him, but it did not hurt.

So this was the power of Scrap without Sly Blue. Without Shiroba. Without the darkness. This was Aoba's true power, the true force of his will, of his consciousness.

"I am a part of you." Shiroba . . . Aoba said to himself, folding his other hand over the one he held. "And I am not as evil as you thought I was."

"You just wanted to be accepted."

Both Aobas bent their heads towards one another until they were touching, and then the glowing Aoba - what was left of Shiroba - disappeared, sucked inside Aoba's consciousness.

In the dark plane inside his own mind, Aoba opened his eyes.

"Let's go bring back Koujaku."

When Aoba returned to his body, it still looked like Shiroba. His skin was pale and his hair paler, but when Aoba lifted himself up off the floor and bent to look in the mirror, he saw a touch of blue flowing back through his hair.

Aoba burst out of the door of his apartment in Oval Tower, running full sprint down the long, white hallways. As he ran, he could feel the blue returning to his hair and the pigment returning to his skin.

"Koujaku!" he screamed as he ran down the halls, down the path he'd memorized while following Shiroba. "Koujaku!"

He came upon the cell block and paused, feeling inside his consciousness for the little speck of Shiroba that remained.

_Third door on the left_, he whispered before melting back into Aoba's mind.

Aoba nodded and sprinted down the hall, coming upon the Koujaku's cell and folding his hands around the bars.

"Koujaku!" Aoba screamed as the final drops of color returning to his pallid skin and hair. "Kou - jak - u!"

A face leaped up at him from within the bars. Startled, Aoba fell back, crying out as he saw Koujaku, beastly Koujaku, snapping and snarling at him from inside the bars.

"No, Koujaku! No! It's me, Aoba." Aoba crawled closer, wrapping his fingers outside the bars even as Koujaku lunged and snapped at him. "ME. Aoba."

"Shir - o - ba!" Koujaku snarled, lashing out Aoba with teeth as long as Aoba's forearm.

Aoba gasped at the wild spectacle Koujaku had become. His tattoo was in full bloom along his chest, back, and arms, and his hair was wild and red. His eyes, too, were completely red with nothing of the Koujaku Aoba had once known lurking within them.

"No," Aoba cried, sinking down outside the bars, his legs growing weak at the sight of his snarling Koujaku. "Oh no."

Something snapped and Aoba cringed as pain bloomed along the lines of his stomach. Looking down, Aoba saw a broken scab in the shape of three long slash marks open and begin to bleed along Aoba's abdomen.

"Oh crap," Aoba moaned, hand reaching down to try and stop the flow of blood. His arms and legs were also red, still trapped in Shiroba's old sleeves and cuffs. But beneath them, Aoba could feel the pain of a dozen others wounds rushing back to the surface. It was pain Shiroba had enjoyed and pain he'd endured, but now the strength that had come with Shiroba's callous fearlessness was waning, so was the limit of what Aoba could endure.

"Ouch, dammit." Aoba struggled to sit up as blood began pouring from his stomach and a dozen other small wounds.

He reached up with a shaky hand and undid Shiroba's cuff sleeves, pulling them and the red sleeves off in one big pull. He did the other one quickly and then reached up for his earrings, determined to get Koujaku to recognize him.

Koujak - ouch!" Aoba hissed, hand going to his stomach. "It's me, dammit. Aoba."

Aoba threw the earring aside and looked into the cell were Koujaku had stilled and was watching him.

"Ouch, oh god." Bite marks and deep claw slashes all along Aoba's torso burned bright with new red hot pain. "Koujaku!" Aoba struggled to lean forward, grabbing the bars with two bloody hands and bringing his face right to the gap. "It's me!" He gasped. "Aoba. AOBA!"

And he collapsed.

Just feet away from his love.

And _Shiroba _got back up.

"Do I have to do everything myself, kid?" He grumbled, reaching into the sleeve pocket Aoba had tossed aside. "Honestly, Aoba. You're a mess."

"Sorry." The two of them struggled together to open the door to Koujaku's cage. "I'll be fine soon."

"It's okay." Shiroba unlocked the cage and then gave Aoba a second to reorientate himself inside the body they shared. "I caused this mess anyway.:

"Thank you," Aoba folded his heart around that half of his consciousness. "For everything."

"Go get us our man," Shiroba said as he faded back into silence.

When Aoba pushed open the cell door, nothing but Koujaku remained.

"So you did hear me," Aoba said, collapsing forward into Koujaku's outstretched arms.

"How could I not?" Koujaku buried his face in Aoba's neck, dark hair swinging forward to tickle his bare collarbone. "Oh, Aoba. I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Koujaku. Shh, it's okay." Aoba strained to unlock the chain around his friend, then fell with his arms locked around Koujaku's neck breathing heavily. "But I think we should go to the hospital now."

"I'm sorry." Koujaku bent his head so his and Aoba's foreheads touched, just like Shiroba had done just a few minutes ago.

"You . . . hippo . . ." Aoba panted. "You should never have left Midorijima."

"You're right," Koujaku said, lifting Aoba up into his arms. "But I promise, Aoba, I'll never leave you again."

With a smile on their faces, both Aobas sank into unconsciousness.


End file.
